Chinese Urbanization, By the Numbers

The Chinese government has just released its latest annual report on urban development and cities, and some of the figures within it are pretty astounding. China is becoming an urban nation at an incredible speed, according to "The Urban Blue Book: China City Development Report No. 5," published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Back in October, China announced that its urban population had officially passed the 50 percent mark. The overall population and urbanization rates haven't been updated since then, but this latest report holds a lot of interesting figures on how China is transitioning from a largely rural country to a very urban one.

The report, unfortunately, doesn't appear to be available in English anywhere online. However, a number of news reports – from the Telegraph, China Daily, Xinhua and The Global Times – highlight some interesting figures: